I turn in a circle to give the major a good view of our surroundings through the telemetry link from my helmet camera. We are twenty meters beyond the right-angle turn in the ramp. To the left of us is the sheer rock wall of the riverbed. To the right is the ice of the glacier, and in front of us is the monstrous staircase the Lankies have managed to carve out of the ice sheet, descending into the darkness like a monument from a long-lost culture. There’s nothing moving in the darkness at the edge of our lights, and it’s quiet except for the wind whistling through the crevice.
“Are they that smart?” I wonder aloud, more to myself than anyone else.
“What do you mean, Lieutenant?”
“Well,” I say. Then I turn around and point to where the ramp makes a sharp right turn as it meets the rock wall.
“The drop ships and the attack birds can’t just shoot ordnance down into the hole,” I say. “It’ll just splash against the rock and close the entrance. And we can’t send armor down because they made a big staircase. It’s like they know our weapons and built their hidey-hole accordingly.”
“Goddamn,” the major says. “It’s bunker-building 101. Angle the exits and deny straight shots. You think?”
“Shit, I hope not.” I step up to the edge of the first step and look down. The five-meter drop is just enough to make it impossible for armor to crawl down to the next level without flipping end over end, and it’s too much for infantry to climb down easily without mechanical assistance.
“See if you can recon a little further down that tunnel, Lieutenant.”
“Copy that, sir,” I say. “We’re going to need some help to get down there. Winch cables from the mules. Have them clip a few together. We’ll need about two hundred meters.”
“I’ll send the word,” the major replies.
“You really want to climb down there, sir?” the platoon sergeant asks me over private comms.
“You got any other hot plans today, Sarge?” I ask, and he chuckles.
“I can think of a few things I’d rather do with my day than climb into a dark tunnel after a shitload of Lankies,” he replies. “Sir.”
“No, I’m right there with you.”
“But we’re going in there anyway.”
I look down into the tunnel, past the giant staircase, as far as my helmet light can illuminate the darkness. Nothing is stirring down there, but I know that won’t be the case for long once we climb down those huge stairs.
“Yep,” I say. “We’re going in there anyway.”
Ten minutes later, two steel tow cables are running from the back ends of the mules down the hundred-meter slope and into the tunnel we’re standing in. We’ll all be able to rappel down the Lanky staircase in a hurry, but getting back up will take quite a bit longer.
“I’m going ahead with First Squad,” I tell the platoon sergeant. “Second follows us down as soon as we’re in overwatch position. One squad moves, two squads cover, until we’re all the way down.”
“We have about a hundred meters line of sight down there. Won’t be a lot of time to engage if they come out in force.”
“If they come, they’ll come one at a time, and they’ll be on all fours. Tunnel’s not big enough for them to stand up or go side by side.”
“Let’s get this done with, then,” the sergeant says, and I grunt agreement.
I rappel down to the step below with First Squad, a quick and adrenaline-accelerated deployment that only takes ten or fifteen seconds. As soon as my boots hit the ice of the step below, I disengage from the rappel line and pick up my slung rifle again. The SI private who dropped down on the cable next to mine has a MARS launcher on his back, which he shoulders and readies. We move forward to the edge of the step and aim our weapons down the tunnel as the rest of the squad follows us down in three-second intervals, as fast as gravity will let them slide down the cable. The ledge behind us is five meters tall, high enough that we won’t be able to get back up the step without the steel cables from the mules. I can’t suppress the feeling that we just took the first step into a mousetrap.
We repeat the process, leapfrogging squads down the slope until we’re all at the bottom of the staircase except for Fourth Squad, which is keeping an overwatch from the last ledge. The tunnel we’re in measures maybe ten meters between its rough and irregular walls, and the ceiling is at least that high. It’s not enough to let a Lanky stand up on its hind legs down here, but it’s enough to make me feel acutely aware of how much bigger and heavier they are, and how puny a single human form looks in front of a Lanky. We finally have ourselves a bug war, and it turns out that we’re the bugs, I hear someone from my past in my memory.
“Delta Actual, are you seeing this?” I send to the company commander. When the reply comes, it’s riddled with static noise.
“Comms are two by five, Lieutenant. Data link keeps cutting out, too.”
“We’re not that far down yet. We are at the bottom of the stairs and have eyes on the next hundred meters down here. Suggest you send a few guys down the slope and around the bend after us so we can relay data and comms off their suits. We’ll let you know if something comes our way.”
“Copy that. Advance, but be careful.”
“Captain says to be careful,” I relay to the platoon sergeant, who shakes his head and chuckles.
“I was in the business of careful, I’d be back at base folding laundry in the supply group,” he says.
Sixty or seventy meters into the tunnel, we finally see something other than darkness at the end of our low-light vision displays. The tunnel seems to terminate in a dead end up ahead, but as we draw closer, we see that it’s merely the elbow of another almost-right-angle bend in the tunnel.
“Another turn.” I annotate the image from my helmet cam for the captain, who is watching our progress from the back of one of the mules. We are running our comms through suit relays, a line-of-sight chain of SI and HD troopers stationed on the slope and in the mouth of the tunnel.
“If that thing turns a few more times like that, we’ll have to leave half the platoon behind for relay,” my platoon sergeant says.
“If the thing turns a few more times like that, we’re heading back to the surface.”
I check my tactical display, which is almost worthless down here in the dark tunnel. There’s an entire platoon lined up behind me in pairs with three-meter intervals between them, thirty-odd troopers stretched out over almost a hundred meters. As a platoon-wide firing line on an open field, we could bring three dozen weapons to bear on any charging Lanky, but down here we’ll be lucky to get clean shots with the first few pairs of troopers. The Lankies couldn’t have designed a better way to negate almost all our advantages. The further we progress into the dark tunnel, the louder the paranoid little voice in my head tells me to get out and let the Euros roll some nukes into this place instead.
“Sarge, go back down the line and bring up the rear with Third Squad,” I tell the platoon sergeant. “If shit goes down up front, I need you at the back to expedite the pullout. Tell Fourth Squad to keep their launchers hot and the winches ready. We may have to exfil in a hurry.”
“Copy that,” the platoon sergeant replies, not quite able to suppress the relief in his voice. “Don’t be gunning for a Medal of Honor today, Lieutenant.”